April 20--Beat 0831, 1 a.m. Wednesday, April 20
The women were crying outside the emergency entrance to Holy Cross Hospital, so loud they could be heard halfway down the block.
Out of nowhere, a man in a black T-shirt began to scream.
"My son," he yelled. He walked in wide, heavy circles near the women, berating police for not searching for his son's killer and begging to be let inside.
The police relented and led a group through the emergency room doors.
A few hours earlier, someone in a red minivan had opened fire on a parked SUV in Gage Park, killing 18-year-old Jason Napoles and wounding three other men.
Napoles was pronounced dead on the scene. His body was taken to Holy Cross where about 15 people -- mostly women -- stood in clusters.
After a few minutes inside, the group walked out and the man began screaming again, "That's my son." Then a wordless yell.
A woman approached. "Let's go, babe. Let's go," she said.
He was silent for a moment. "I'm not going to leave my son," he told her. "They can lock me up, I don't give a f---."
"Let's go," she said. She and a few others walked down the driveway and waited for him on the sidewalk, crying.
The man began pacing again. He stopped to lean face-forward against a post. His chest began to shake and heave.
The woman walked back to him. Together they got halfway down the driveway before he stopped and doubled over at the waist, screaming again. "Oh, my son," he said. "Oh, God. They goddamn took my son."
He got to the sidewalk, then looked up at the hospital and called out for his son. "Ahh, Jason!" he screamed. "Come out, man."
He told the others he would walk home.
"You can't walk," said one woman. "You've got other kids, grandkids [to think about]."
"They took my son!" he repeated.
The women around him began to cry again. "Come on, let's go get in the car," one of them told him. "Let's go home."
